There was a bit of a seeding upset following the Swiss rounds, which saw the unbeaten Kalipto and Breacher18 unfortunately both lose their first finals match-ups, while Jmessi came from 3rd place in the table and emerged victorious in the end!

The first round score tables are below for those that are interested.

Any feedback on the tournament structure or what it was like to participate are very much welcome; if people are up for it we’ll run another one soon

Having just finished round 3 this morning, we already have a couple of results for round 4!

Kalipto is still unbeaten, after four games…

Remember, the top 4 placed will go through to the knockout finals to determine the end positions. There’s just this round then one more, so make it count!

Best of luck with the rest of your games! I shall leave you with another gritty match report from DoctorMike!

Geraint’s picture shows that this game finished as close as you can get, with a power 1 Core Bot on sudden death!

Round 2 (vs Geraint)
All three matches were with basic decks, all three were “edge of the seat” close, and all were played very fast.

In the first game, we were down to the wire with the last few cards, but Geraint used a pack of BashBots against a fairly poor show of weedy cards on my part, and my stack was down to nothing. Sometimes it is better to discard weak cards, rather than leave them for the opponent to exploit. One down!

The second game was even closer, but minimising losses won out with a handy ReaperBot came in (probably just before Sudden Death) when we were both down to a couple of cards between us. At one point, I was convinced Geraint had me, when he FatalBotted my second to last card, a strong StompBot I was relying on to protect me Fortunately, my next draw (almost certainly the last before Sudden Death would have begun) was able to just swing the victory. One all!

Geraint was clearly an experienced and cunning opponent. Could luck or great play bring it home, as it had in Round One? I was on the ropes, due to the rapid back and forth; the games had been so fast they had the feel of face to face combat, with my moves being answered almost before I could wipe my brow!

The third and final game was a bitter struggle with some impossible choices. Play ClumsyBots and weaken my own stack, or juggle ShotBots with another hand of low pore cards to eat away at him. Where I made my mistake was not throwing away a ClumsyBot – I didn’t know before today that you could discard from your hand rather than the stack, until I saw it in a simultaneous game – but it skulked there in my hand, unplayable until the end. The remainder of my cards were outgunned, but only barely. What should I have done differently? Well, now I know to eject ClumsyBots early rather than be forced (or scared) to play them later.

So, down by 2 to 1, but all three were bitter struggles, the way a combat game should be. So, I’m 1-1-0 for Round 3 and mid-pack (stack?) with Geraint out on top with 2-0-0! Damn you Geraint! Mind you, Geraint IS the name of a heroic Welsh warrior, and there’s no dishonour in being beaten by the best!

Overall the games looked to be fairly balanced; there were a lot of 2-1 match results and only a couple of clean wins.

There was only one match that had to be awarded a win due to player inactivity, which is a shame but at least it wasn’t more! 48 hrs to take a turn is also quite a short timescale if you have something come up, but anything longer would cause the tournament to drag on for too long, so that’s how it has to be!

A couple of match reports from the first round:

DoctorMike (vs BuzzBuzz)

“BuzzBuzz whisked in an early, unexpected challenge; I’d originally been pencilled in to play Templarkun. It was a deck of the day and Buzz’s first turn knocked out 3/4 of my stack. Where did that come from? A rapid few turns – while I should have been doing work email – and I was one down. There’s an advantage to going first!

If I wasn’t going to be 2 for 0, I was going to have to use the defeated player advantage in choosing decks. So, I went for the well known, really balanced (i.e. few surprises) Basic pack. This served me well, and we were 1-1, despite my entire stack being face up for half the game; oh for a LeaderBot…

I had a chance, but again it would be BuzzBuzz playing first and choosing decks. This works well to allow “comeback time” (to coin a phrase). Buzz started well, but I held back some cards in the early game. I’m glad I did, because there were a few surprises in uncovered top cards. Thankfully, these weren’t all bad, and after a much closer game, which might have gone either way, I just pulled off the win. 2-1 in my favour!

There’s always an element if luck in this game, but it’s what you do with them that really counts. Buzz showed that powerfully in the first game. Maybe I had a similar “tail wind” in the third. An excellent first round that could have gone either way. Anyone playing BuzzBuzz in future rounds better watch out!”

Seven9zero (vs Oli)

“I was robbed!”

This match-up was clearly very traumatising as this was the most detail offered on the result. I can only imagine the terror experienced as his last card was forcibly taken from him. Seeing as Grappling Bot is the only Bot capable of stealing cards, they are currently the focus of the investigation, but they are complaining that this is unfair profiling. We’ll keep you updated. In the meanwhile, if anyone witnessed anything could they please report it and hopefully we’ll be able to get Seven9zero’s card back.

We carry on now to round 2! For those who were victorious in the first round, it’s time to increase the lead; for those who lost, it’s not too late! You just have to score enough points to be in the top 4 to make it into the final knockout rounds!

With the appearance of the expansion pack, custom-built decks have become far more versatile!

Match 1

We constructed our decks from a set of 4 packs each (2x original, 2x expansion), using the rank building method: 10 of each rank, total 60 cards.

We played single Stak, 9 down and 3 in hand, with Reactive Play.

Sarah’s Deck

Sarah’s deck on the left went for a very balanced mix of cards: some strong Stomp and Core Bots, backed up by lots of destructive entry effects (plenty of Cannonballs and Shots) and a few of the quirkier cards (Invisi Bot, Nano Bot) that can be devastating in the right situation, but otherwise get taken out easily.

My Deck

My deck on the right was built around control cards (Levi Bot, Pit Bot, Portal Bot, Callout Bot) with the aim of manoeuvring their Stak and punishing them with Bash Bots. There were also lots of Fatal Bots to deal with any powerful Bot threats.

The Result

Sadly my deck never really got going; the Callout Bots appeared when Sarah had an empty hand, or Pit Bots when I had no Bash to follow up with. The games were fairly close but I got beaten 2-1 in the end. I definitely needed more Bash in this deck.

Match 2

For the second match Sarah stuck with the same victorious deck, while I constructed a completely new one!

This one is based around the numerous Anchor Bots and Bountiful Bots, which work to support the Leader (and Stomp Leader) Bots and Greedy Bots.

The Result

I fell behind 2-0 but managed to make a nice comeback to win 4-3.

When the deck worked, it was pretty much invincible; once my Stak was all face-up with a load of Anchor Bots at the bottom and several Leader Bots at the top, with Bountiful Bots firing off to allow me a full hand to adapt to her cards, there wasn’t much that could be done. The only real problem was when I started with a handful of Anchor Bots so had no way of defending myself, or when her Nano Bot appeared and cleaned through all of my high-powered cards! For improvement I’d stick in a few more Bountiful Bots as this deck really suffers in Reactive Play and more cards are always helpful to boost the Leader Bots.

After receiving the final proof approval only a few weeks ago, Cartamundi came through in record time and sent an appropriately coloured truck to deliver the Stak Bots Yellow expansion.

Bots don’t need to breathe, so they’d wrapped them up tight in plastic for their safety.

SO MANY BOXES OF BOTS!!!!!

The Magnet Bots had all stuck together.

This is Sarah looking happy, just before she lost the first ever game with the new expansion

Greedy Bot sadly cost her the game; after consuming all her other cards and becoming power 9, it promptly ran up against a Nano Bot and was destroyed on the next turn, leaving her with only a card or two in her Stak.

Fan of Stak Bots?

If you backed for the expansion with Kickstarter, your new Bots will be on their way to you soon. If you didn’t, you’ll have to wait for the official release date of 30th May to get your hands on a set.

“Tactics?
Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a luck-fest. There is a delightful element of randomness, but you do have to work out when to play a certain card, when to hold back or even sacrifice a card for the greater good. (Don’t worry, these bot’s sole purpose in life is to fight for your own insane pleasure.) Play well and you can unleash a chain of ‘robo fury’ that will decimate an opponent’s deck in seconds.
It certainly requires more thought than watching any of the Michael Bay Transformers movies… ”

And this:

“Little bots battling to their own demise for the amusement of their gaming overlord masters” – This is exactly what the game is about, just don’t let the Bots know!!

“This game has already become a firm favourite in a very short period of time, and we heartily recommend it. The artwork is beautifully elegant and simple, the rules are straightforward and simple (though a little subtle sometimes), and the gameplay is frantic, exciting and engaging.”

And my favourite bits:

“Nothing screams ‘future’ like a robot for me and it’s a constant disappointment that they’re still not yet running around delivering pizza.”

“StakBotS is one of those rare games that almost demands to be replayed the minute you have lost. You just KNOW what went wrong (you probably don’t) and you KNOW you can get it right next time (you probably won’t).

The game seems well balanced between rewarding good and complex strategies, but also throwing enough of a randomness into the game to mean that novice players won’t feel necessarily out-gunned. As in any good game the randomness always feels like it is aimed squarely at you, and the world and the game hate you.”